HE’LL BE BACK, BUT WITH A SHOTGUN OR WITH FLOWERS?

If action movies taught me anything, it’s that its okay to kill as long as their opinion differ from mine, blue aliens put their ponytails into horses, and technology will go back in time just so they can kill Sarah Connors.

Ever since the technology germinated from the light bulb, we wondered if they will raise up against us. “I’ll be back”, he said, now Sarah Connors just have to decide if that’s good or bad.

After all, we are only human. This means that we are animistic and lazy. Don’t deny it, it’s all there. We as a species will tear each other to shreds just because someone else entered our territory, and if we can do so without getting up from the couch, we will. This makes us hate change. Why? Because change means something’s different, it means adapting, it means work. The thing we fear the most in the information revolution is not when our robot overlords decides to go hunting, it’s that we fear having to set up a new set of rules and changing our behavior to accommodate this new intrusion.

Take the church for example. They hindered technology growth for nearly 100 years. Why? They didn’t want to have to adapt their beliefs and morals, so they said it was evil and fought against it (ironic, isn’t it? Now their doing more work).

This has happened many times throughout history. When writing took over folk songs, when cities took over villages, when rocks took over straw, when bricks took over rocks, when plumbing system took over dumping out of your window, we all moaned and whined like there isn’t going to be a tomorrow, and when we embraced the new, tomorrow turned out better than expected.

This is why the younger generations doesn’t fear this change. They grew up with the new stuff, and the world changing means they don’t have to. We were born in an era of iThings and the internet. We love being constantly entertained and not having to remember the log of 4 or the periodic table. We hate change like everyone else, but we grew up with this. Taking technology away from us means setting up new laws and changing our behavior to accommodate. That means we now have to adapt, it means work, and it means we don’t like it.

So this debate isn’t about moral value, it isn’t about the better or worse for the future, it isn’t about deep philosophical implications. Its more simple than that. It’s about our natural tendency to be lazy. And since I grew up with technology, 99% of my generation and I are technology optimists. Since people age 30+ didn’t grow up with technology, a large percent of them are technology pessimists.

Sure we might be attached to it, and if we are ever to be detached from it, we might not be able to function at full capacity, but its the same can be said about the act of writing when you run out of paper. Borrow from a friend or visit Staples, suck it up, and continue your day.

I see it this way: Technology will enable us to be lazier than we ever have been while being more than 100% functional. We no longer have to wash the dishes by hand, wait till 8 to watch Jersey Shore, or even change your clocks by one our manually.